Thursday, January 21, 2010

A Star is Born...

It was Sunday, January 10th, and I'd just finished watching my beloved New England Patriots get publicly eviscerated by the Baltimore Ravens when my phone went off with a new text message. It was from Katie Cross, our other web development geek here at APS -- she was in New Jersey getting an education in ice boating and wanted to know if it would be okay to take Monday off because the ice was fantastic. Being the benevolent dictator that I am, her request received my blessing.

Little did I know that she was bound for stardom that next day as the Weather Channel came out to profile the Shrewsbury Ice Boat & Yacht Club on the Navesink River, where she was learning the craft of sliding around at silly speeds. And it was the good people of TWC that gave Katie her 6.7 seconds of national broadcast fame. You'll see her at the 1:44 mark of the segment, viciously attacking the mainsheet of the DN she was using before delivering poignant analysis with the articulation of a classically trained Shakespearean thespian. Which is to say she didn't stutter or say anything completely embarrassing to herself, her family or (most importantly) APS. The again, it's really hard to say anything too awful in 6.7 seconds.

It was actually a nice ~2:00 piece on ice boating that one again highlights the fun that can be had when sliding around at twice the speed of the wind. Unfortunately, we can't embed the Weather Channel video here on the blog because (and I'm just guessing here) TWC is owned by NBC, and... well, they pretty much suck. That's right, we support Conan O'Brien. Katie actually had a full 15 seconds, but Jay Leno wanted in on the video and they cut her out.

P.S.: This is my last post for The Stern Scoop -- unfortunately, those charges finally stuck and I'm going on a court-ordered mandatory vacation. Just kidding. For now.

No, I made a super tough call and I'm headed out to forge a new path or something like that. I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank everyone here at APS for five great years and thank all the readers for reading some of the stuff I write and not sending nasty e-mails to APS ownership afterwards. I leave you with a plea not to smoke. Unless you're on fire. Because then, it's only natural.

Raleigh - Sorry for not responding to you. I've looked around and searched on the Weather Channel site but I haven't found the video again unfortunately. It was part of a larger winter weather piece but I imagine in light of the recent Snomaggedon the Weather Channel has other things to focus on. Sadly all we have left is the still photo of Katie cheesing it up for the camera.

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